Nicole feels

When I started home schooling four months ago, I had many grandiose ideas. Field trips, science experiments, life-training stuff.

And Shakespeare.

For the life of me, I don't know why I wanted to tackle Shakespeare.

Well, maybe now I do, but I am getting ahead of myself.

I decided that Kay and N@than should study one of the dead Englishman's plays. Knowing that Mel Gibson is big-time eye candy in the 1990 film version of Hamlet, I chose that play.

(You can stop snickering now.)

I didn't want them to just watch it. I wanted them to experience it by reading the play, along with some commentary. But this also meant I had to read the play, since it had been a good 14 years since I'd gazed upon "Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him..."

Act by act, scene by scene. About midway into Act IV, I was beginning to ask that famous of all questions:

What was I thinking?

(Did you really think I was going to do the whole "to be or not to be" thing? That would have been so predictable.)

We finished up the reading of it on Wednesday. I borrowed the DVD from our library, and after a bit of threatening, got the progeny to sit down to watch it tonight.

Of course, their lack of real resistance couldn't have been because they got to stay up later than usual on a school night. Perish the thought...my scholarly loves!?

Even still, there was a bit of grumbling and moans of "but I still can't understand what they are saying!" throughout the beginning. But about midway through when Hamlet, as Nathan succinctly put it, starts "dissing" Claudius, I observed two middle schoolers becoming entranced.

Nathan recited a few lines before Hamlet actually spoke them (Ha! He did read it!). Kaytlin rolled with laughter in much the same way she does while watching Everybody Loves Raymond as Hamlet taunted the king concerning the disposal of poor Polonius.

And they both leapt to their feet as the DVD decided to skip and jump and do that lovely scratchy-dance overworked DVDs like to do, protesting the humanity of it all because they couldn't see the final scene completely.

They were watching Shakespeare and enjoying it.

My children.

My students.